


Return To Duty

by ArtemisWalsh



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/F, spy lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 19:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisWalsh/pseuds/ArtemisWalsh





	Return To Duty

There was no applause when Cipher Nine entered the Citadel. With each step she took, a cloud of silence advanced with her. Conversations halted, and watchers whispered into their headsets. Faces turned away from the agent: none wanted to be seen staring at her, but none could resist looking at her. She was the same tall Chiss woman who had left the Citadel three weeks ago. But that was not what they were looking for. As she walked down the halls of Imperial Intelligence, all the Empire’s eyes tried to glean some change in her, to see what was new. Because something had to be new. She was something that none of them had seen. A creature that all the knowledge, of an organization built on knowledge, had never seen before.

She was a woman, just a normal woman, of the same cloth as them, who had killed a member of the Dark Council. 

She could feel it. The silence that she led. The eyes dancing to and from her. They were awed and cowed by her presence. Was this what it was like to be a Sith? Was this what Darth Jadus saw? Maybe that was why Sith were so arrogant.

“She’s back! Cipher Nine’s back!” The chippy young voice of Watcher Three broke through her haze as he lept from his seat and ran to her. She could barely put her arms up to stop him before he had her in a tight hug. 

“Watcher...” the cipher groaned. “Don’t you have duties to attend?”

“Nothing important! It can wait.” He broke off the hug, but kept his hands on her shoulders. “You’re here! You’re alright!”

“I’m fine, Watcher Three,“ she said. “I spent three weeks in various medbays and hospitals. I hope, at least, that I’m all better.” She shook herself to dislodge his excited grip. 

“We were all so worried for you! You fought against one of the most powerful Sith in the galaxy! After the battle, Watcher Tw took the security footage of the battle. We all got to see it.” 

Cipher Nine tightened up. “You saw the fight?” 

“You bet we did,” A gruff voice answered. An older man came up from behind Watcher Three.

“Fixer.” The Cipher smiled. “Did you enjoy the show?”

“Like watching a dance. Jadus firing off lightning and throwing things around, the Rattataki avoiding his attacks, and you landing perfect shots from across the room.” 

The Cipher tightened her hand. She was back in the room now, as he was describing. Kaliyo rolled and jumped away from his attacks, all the while firing off her blaster. Jadus blocked her shots with his lightsaber, and Cipher Nine utilized his distraction to great effect. Whenever he tried to hit the cipher from afar, Kaliyo could get a hit in. Whenever he focused on defending himself from Kaliyo, Cipher could attack. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” She shivered. Jadus filled the room with despair, as if one could feel themselves dying. Add that onto the very real fear that their fight could have ended in defeat. When he laid broken and dying on the floor, she felt as though she had returned from a cold dark abyss. 

The beeping of her holocom broke her flashback. She waved the fixer and watcher away, and pulled the communicator out. A sigh of relief left her when she saw the familiar face of Watcher Two.

“Cipher. I heard that you were back.” She was smiling.

“Watcher Two.” She smiled back. “It’s good to be back. I missed Intelligence.”

“And we missed you. Please report to Keeper’s office.” There was a sharp inhalation in the first sentence. Like anxiety. But Watcher Two didn’t get anxiety. Probably the holocom. All the monitoring and recording in the building probably affected the signal. 

“Acknowledged.” She said, and proceeded across headquarters, to the door at the back. When the door opened, two of her closest friends stood by a desk, both with hands folded behind their backs. Keeper, her aging superior with a stone face, and Watcher Two, her stoic handler. 

“Cipher Nine. Welcome back.”

“Good to be back, Keeper.”

“I assume you noticed how Intelligence reacted to your arrival. You’re the most talked-about agent in memory, possibly in the organization's history.”

And he had said this wasn’t glamorous work. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

“Agreed. Celebrity status is a liability in our line of work. Luckily, Darth Jadus was already publicly dead, so news of the Artus system was minimal, and easily dealt with. But Ciphers are supposed to be nameless and faceless. I’ve toyed with the idea of halting all chatter about you.”

Watcher Two cut in. “In any case, we’re happy to see you. The Empire is lucky to still have its most effective agent.”

“For as long as it does.” Keeper interjected.

Cipher Nine raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “You slayed a member of the Dark Council. You activated the Eradicators. And we watched. There is still political fallout to be dealt with. We should enjoy what we have, while we have it.” 

The Cipher nodded. “Understood.” Ironically, she once had the protection of Darth Jadus. Now his shadow threatened her career. 

“I promise you, should the Sith threaten either of you, I will do whatever it takes to protect both of my finest operatives.” 

Watcher Two nodded. “Much obliged, sir.”

“Thank you, sir.” Cipher Nine replied. 

“For the moment, however, I’m suspending both of you from field operations. Just as a precaution. And you both could use the rest.” Just then, his holocom began beeping. “If you’ll excuse me.” He promptly walked out of the room. 

The two operatives followed him with their eyes, unsure of how to respond by such a rapid fire announcement. As the door closed behind him, they looked to each other. A silence fell. The watcher scratched the back of her head. “That was unexpected.”

“You’d think he wanted us as far away from Dromund Kaas as possible.” 

“That might raise even more suspicion.”

The cipher smirked. “Well, if we do become enemies of the Sith, I know some people who owe me favors. We can slip away and hide.”

The watcher snickered. “Please don’t do that, I’d hate to be ordered to track you down.” She paused. “How are you feeling?”

“After three weeks of hospitals? I feel great.” She flexed her shooting arm. “Too great. Do you know how boring a medbay is when you can’t move around.”

“Not yet. I’m sorry I never came to visit you. I did worry.”

Worry? “What do you mean?”

“Oh.” She clasped a hand to her mouth. “Nothing.”

It could not have been more apparent that it wasn’t nothing. “Watcher, I’m a Cipher Agent. I’m good at reading people.”

She sighed and put her hand down. “Across all that time you were recovering, I was worried. I didn’t know if we’d get you back. At least, the way you were.”

“And that scared you.”

“Yes.” 

“Because you like me the way I am.”

“Cipher! It’s not normal! I’m not supposed to do that!”

What was this about? “You’re a human! Humans care about their friends.”

“It’s not normal for me! I’m not supposed to grow attached! I’m not supposed to care like that.” She walked in a circle, and laced her fingers over her head. “I’ve been watching you too much. Following you too much. I’ve presumed a level of intimacy that doesn’t exist.”

“Watcher...” How did she respond to that? “I don’t...” This was a first. Cipher Nine was at a loss for words. “I don’t think we’re not intimate. Considering all we’ve been through, what the last five months have been like. You’ve been one of the closest people to me through the most difficult times of my life. That doesn’t count for nothing.” 

The watcher’s jaw dropped. She stood, still, like a picture, staring across the room at the cipher. She kept like that, then swallowed loudly. “Cipher...” she muttered, walking across the room “I need your honest answer.” She stopped barely half a meter from the Chiss. “What do you think of me?” Her voice trembled. Her eyes stretched wide. She was scared.

What was going on? The stoic watcher had exuded more emotion just now than in the entire time they had known each other. “I…” Was this some sort of game? Was there an ulterior motive? If so, it was an amazing performance. But it didn’t look like that. “Watcher…I’ve conspired in caves on Balmorra. I’ve breathed the toxic air of Nar Shadaa. I’ve killed the lowest of the low on Tattoine and nobility of Alderaan. And I did it all with you. You were with me through all of it.” She breathed in. “I couldn’t have done any of it without you.” She paused again, this time gulping. “You’re the closest friend I have here.”

Watcher Two clasped her hands together over her mouth. “It means…it means a lot to hear you say that.” “When I hear your voice, my first instinct is to ask your status. I always need to know you’re alright. When I see your face on the holocom, my heart skips and my breath catches. I find myself wishing that I could see you again, face-to-face.”

“I bounced around the galaxy for five months. You could have said something.” The Cipher replied. “I would have come.”

“Like what? ‘Cipher, I want to see your face again. Cross the galaxy just so we can be in the same room’” 

She walked up to the watcher. “I would have come.” She repeated. “I enjoy seeing your face too.”

The watcher’s eyes widened. Her hands moved up, then down, then up again, grabbing the cipher by the front of her uniform and pulling her in for a kiss. The kiss lasted barely a second, as Watcher Two immediately broke away and held a hand up to her mouth. “Cipher, I’m so sorry...”

The agent could have broken the watcher’s grip long before their lips ever touched. She could tell what was happening the moment the watcher’s hands began moving erratically. But she let it happen. “Watcher...you’re a terrible kisser.”

“Oh.” A small dejected noise left her.

“Let me show you how.” Cipher Nine cupped her watcher’s face and kissed her back. Due to their disparate sized, the chiss woman had to bend down slightly, but it was more than made up for by the very feeling of kissing Watcher Two.

They broke off, and Watcher Two quickly returned to an upright stance, hiding her hands behind her back. She could not hide her blush. “The...I...Intelligence doesn’t mind bonding between agents but that...this...”

“Is that not what we’re doing?” Cipher Nine asked? “Bonding?”

Watcher Two gulped. “Yes. I supposed we are. But an office is the wrong place to do so.”

Cipher Nine raised an eyebrow. “Do you have somewhere else in mind?”

The watcher grinned. “Follow me.”


End file.
